Field of the Invention
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a crash pad for a vehicle and a manufacturing method thereof.
Description of the Related Art
A crash pad, also called “instrument panel”, is a vehicle interior part that is attached to the bottom of the glass in front of the driver's seat. An airbag is mounted in the crash pad. When a vehicle accident occurs, the airbag deploys through the seam of the crash pad to protect the life of the driver and the passenger from external impact. Thus, the airbag is a part that is very important in terms of design, convenience and safety.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional crash pad for a vehicle, and FIG. 2 shows the cross-section of a conventional crash pad for a vehicle. Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, a crash pad 100 comprises a core layer 1, a foam layer 2 formed on the surface of the core layer 1, and a skin layer 3 formed on the surface of the foam layer 2. Herein, the skin layer 3 is formed of a material and a coating material, which may exhibit the appearance and sensory properties of actual leather, in order to emphasize design and sensory properties. In addition, the skin layer 3 may be subjected to a skin scoring process to form a scoring 4 for deployment of an airbag.
Meanwhile, this crash pad is manufactured by sequentially forming a skin layer and a core layer, inserting the skin layer and the core layer into a foaming mold, and foaming polyurethane in the mold to form a polyurethane foam layer. This crash pad has problems in that the production thereof is time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, the skin layer is generally formed to have a thickness of about 1 mm to 2 mm by various processes, and materials or processes used to the skin layer are costly. For this reason, methods for manufacturing crash pads having increased competitiveness as a result of reducing material costs and the number of processes have been studied.
Prior art documents related to the present invention include Korean Unexamined Patent Application No. 2015-0135708 (published on Dec. 3, 2015; entitled “Method for manufacturing a skin for a crash pad”).